Thursday, 13 September 2012

Book Festival Transwonderland

The
fiftieth anniversary of the famous Writers' Conference during the
1962 Edinburgh International Festival was celebrated with various
events at this year's Book Festival. I chose, however, to go only to
a number of events which particularly interested me. Online
podcasts of the 50th anniversary events are in any case readily
available.

Noo
Saro-Wiwa
was interviewed by Drew Campbell, and highlighted as 'The Scottish
PEN "Free the Word" Event'. She lived in Britain for a
long time, and is the daughter of Nigerian political activist Ken
Saro-Wiwa, who was judicially murdered by the Abacha military
dictatorship. Her reading was about her return visit to a now
democratic Nigeria, which is recorded in Looking
for Transwonderland. It
is no conventional travelogue, but a clear-eyed, very well-informed,
and often very funny, look at Nigeria from her enlightening
perspective of dual citizenship. The title refers to an amusement
park in Lagos which is nearly falling apart, yet also testifies to a
yearning from Nigerians to make their country a better place, and
their irrepressible optimism about not only the possibility, but the
necessity to do so.

Janine
di Giovanni and
Ed
Vulliamy, chaired
by Bidisha with tact and sensitivity as both are not only veteran
war-zone journalists, but also strong personalities, gave their
personal accounts of the war following the break-up of Yugoslavia
which devastated Bosnia twenty years ago now. It was, as the Book
Festival programme all too accurately described it, 'the worst
carnage to blight Europe since the Third Reich'. It demonstrated
once again how bestial human beings can be to each other, even when,
or perhaps especially when, close neighbours. Di Giovanni and
Vulliamy also rightly blamed the failure of nerve of the western
powers in being so slow to intervene, as well as the forces of
extreme Serb and Croat nationalism. A more temperate account of
this event is to be found in Morelle Smith's excellent blog.

David
Bellos,
who translated the novels of Georges Perec and Ismail Kadare, among
others, gave a gripping talk on the art of translation. He argued
that attempting 'faithful' translations of any text is a futile
exercise. It is in the nature of language that we always 'translate'
to each other, even when we speak the 'same' language. All
communication involves using language in various contexts, and it is
these contexts which create meaning, not isolated words.

Two
literary heavyweights, Joyce
Carol Oates
and Carol
Ann Duffy,
read and discussed their work to sell-out audiences in the capacious
tent of the RBS Theatre. Duffy read from The
Bees, and
also impersonated the likes of Mrs. Noah, with accompaniment from the
'merry flautist' John
Sampson.
A surprise bonus was her inviting Roger
McGough from
the audience to read a couple of poems. Oates was introduced by
Jackie McGlone with a light, unobtrusive touch, highlighting
informality. She read from her new novel Mudwoman
and gave something of a brilliant masterclass in how she structured
her novel, which explores the psychology of dreams and the pain of
bereavement.

John
Lanchester,
chaired by Alan Taylor, read from his novel Capital,
and discussed the consequences of financial meltdown in terms of the
gentrification of a London street originally populated by a thriving,
or at least reasonably cohesive, working-class community. His
satirical bite was complemented by banter from Taylor about class in
Edinburgh.

A
more benign view of Edinburgh was given by Ron
Butlin.
Chaired by Gavin Wallace, he read from the poems he wrote as
Edinburgh Makar in The
Magicians of Edinburgh. 'David
Hume Takes a Last Walk on Arthur's Seat' was especially moving.
Paul
Durcan
gave a bravura performance in a morning session at the Spiegeltent.
His poems were full of dark humour, but he read them with perky
defiance and a strong sense of irony for a solid three quarters of an
hour. It's a pity though that the audience was not invited to ask
questions, thus making it a rather short session. Bashabi
Fraser
read from Ragas
and Reels, poems
about Scots-Asians, with photographs by Herman
Rodrigues,
who gave a brief talk, peppered with anecdotal jokes, about his
enthusiasm for photography. She also talked about Under
the Banyan Tree, a
sumptuously illustrated book about Scots who made a great
contribution to the Raj and are still fondly remembered in India.

The
'transwonderland' of economic chicanery all over the globe, with
attendant crass exploitation, drug and sex trafficking, plus
violence with 'extreme prejudice' was discussed, with many a vivid
story, by the writer and journalist Lydia
Cacho.
A woman of steely courage, she mentioned how a drug-lord in Mexico,
her homeland, offered to be her 'protector'. Bumping into her in a
restaurant, he asked her to drop a napkin, thereby not compromising
herself, if she wanted a kingpin who threatened her to be 'taken
care of '. She went back to friends at her table and hissed 'Don't
you dare drop a napkin!'.

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